Talk to almost anyone in our game and ask if they would like to be more consistent or shoot better scores, and you’re liable to hear a string of adjectives that have to do with hope and wishes!
We remember coaching at the old River Road Sporting Clays in Monterey, California years ago and the owner, Bruce Barsotti, had a saying about the grumblers at the end of the tournaments. He called them the “Woulda-Coulda-Shoulda” group. These shooters were regulars who showed up to shoot on a very frequent basis and would shoot a couple of hundred targets each outing. But for some reason, they just could not get any better!
I was talking to student and friend, Dan Wagoner, at 5H Sporting Clays in Frankston, Texas, and asked him if he saw anything that resembled this group. After a chuckle, he shared that 95 percent of the shooters don’t know what practice really is! They’re hoping to find something that will give their game consistency from someone else who can shoot better than they can. And what they don’t know is that the helping hand they’re looking for is at the end of their own arm!
We both had a laugh about that, and Dan reminisced about when we would make a change in his game. Whether it was in a session or on the phone, it took him at least three weeks of deliberate practice to become proficient with the new data.
What we were really talking about are the different mindsets that shooters bring to their games as they try to improve. Carol Dweck has researched mindsets and compares what she calls a growth mindset to a fixed mindset. In a growth mindset, intelligence can be learned, and the mantra is Learn Learn Learn. In a fixed mindset, the mantra is look good at all costs, so you look for something easy that you already know how to do.
In a growth mindset, you work with passion and dedication; effort is the key. In a fixed mindset, you don’t want to work too hard or practice too much. In a growth mindset, you want to embrace your mistakes and confront your deficiencies. But in a fixed mindset, because you’re trying to not fail in front of others and look good when you’re shooting, if you’re faced with a setback, you run away.
So, people with a fixed mindset are trying to look good in front of other shooters. They shoot a lot but don’t get better, because they never get out of their comfort zone on targets that are difficult to them. They’re more interested in what score they shoot when “practicing” than looking for what they cannot do and either get some help from an experienced coach and/or admitting to themselves that learning really begins just beyond the comfort zone!
In studying mindsets, we’ve come up with what we call a learning mindset and a performance mindset that we present at our total immersion classes at the 74 Ranch each March. This is how we describe a learning mindset: it’s the complete opposite of a performance mindset because you’re thinking about new concepts, taking them to the range, and developing them into skills that will allow your game to move to a higher level.
Failure is the first step in any learning curve. When you’re practicing a new concept, you will fail. And how you handle these failures will, in great measure, determine how long it takes you to get it, or even if you get it at all! The real question then becomes, “Are you willing to linger long enough in the uncomfortable phase of learning to fire the circuits enough times to actually learn something?”
And it’s a choice! At this point, most shooters choose to let the fear of missing and the unknown keep them from really trying something enough times to see what its potential can really become. It’s at this point that trying to hit the target gets in the way of learning something new.
With a learning mindset, you can focus on the new circuit and stumble through the sequence enough times so you can begin to actually build a new circuit that will expand your game. The target will break as a result of the new circuit firing in the correct sequence when your focus is not on the new circuit, but on the target. In building a new circuit, your focus is on the sequence of the new circuit. As a result, your focus will be half on the target and half on the new sequence -what we would call a 50/50 focus ratio, or even maybe a 40/60 or even 20/80, depending on just how different the new circuit is.
Failure is inevitable because you’re thinking about the gun. This is the one fact that keeps shooters from learning something new that will expand their game to a level they want – but without the failure that accompanies improvement!
Some of the things we’ve learned in our years of coaching might surprise you. The slower you can perform the new circuit – even without a target in the air – the quicker the brain will understand how you want the new circuit to be sequenced. Repeating the sequence over and over, even with your eyes closed and without a target in the air, will allow for much quicker and better sequencing.
When you’re learning something new, it’s normal to be uncomfortable, because the brain cannot predict what it’s about to do. It’s never done it before. When doing something totally new, your brain goes into your long-term memory and takes different parts of past shots and puts them in a new sequence.
But in the beginning, the circuit does not fire synchronously. It’s through repetition and correction that the brain improves on different parts of the sequence and it begins to chunk different parts of the new circuit together. Things become smoother and easier to replicate and your focus ratio can go to more on the target and less on the new move and the gun. With patience and repetition, the focus ratio begins to be 80/20 and then 90/10, and eventually after 1,500 or so reps, it’s back to 95/5.
The key to this journey being successful on the minimum number of shots is that the hits are visualized before and after the target breaks, and misses are corrected on the next shot. It’s at this point that self-correction begins to occur. The misses can be corrected on the next shot because there are so few variables in the circuit, which has become automatized.
Log in or become a member to read the rest of this article.
